Her eyes narrowed as tension began to pour into her muscles. “I’m the head Gossip and pop-culture writer for Chicago Pulse, Dalton. I’m pretty sure I know how to do my job without you telling me how to do it.”
“I’m telling you the conditions you need to go through now so you’ll be safe. The last grand opening you covered—”
“The last grand opening I covered, I was drugged and almost a victim of acquaintance rape,” she finished for him as the tension blossomed into fury. “Yes, Dalton, I know. I was there. What’s your point?”
“My point is that it’d be stupid of you to put yourself in that exact same situation.”
“Stupid?” Her head threatened to explode. “First off, a club’s grand opening doesn’t usually include slipping people a roofie. I’ve covered hundreds of them, so I know what I’m talking about better than you. Secondly, I know you’re a doctor and a CATE alum, but this doesn’t give you the right to call anything I choose to do stupid.”
“Whoa, I didn’t say you were stupid.”
“You know I’ve been given this assignment and you know I’ve accepted it. Yet you just said it’d be stupid of me to do it. So yeah, you really kind of did, which means we’re done with this conversation. Good night.”
With that, Hannah hauled the car door open, slid inside and shut the door on the sound of him calling her name.
She’d had enough.
*
“I guess I just need to know if others who’ve experienced what I’ve gone through feel that people look at them differently.” Sitting in front of the camera in her attic studio, Hannah let it all hang out—the rage, the hurt, even the bewilderment, while the flow of chat scrolled by. She’d already done the scheduled hour with the basketball player, which had taken all of her professionalism to keep focus on the subject of his new fashion line. But once that online interview and Q and A session wrapped up, she’d switched gears and let her viewers know just how badly her date with Dalton had gone.
Needless to say, the chat had turned from basketball and street fashion to a boisterous free-for-all of every possible type of opinion. Just what she needed after her epic failure of a date with Dalton.
“The thing is, I consider myself a fairly smart person. Maybe not the splitting-atoms kind of smart, but certainly smart enough that people should have enough faith that I possess the basic human instincts to take care of myself. To believe that I can at least be trusted to look both ways before crossing a street, or to not pour arsenic on my cereal. But because some jackhole tried to make me his victim once, I feel like I’ve been branded as someone who’s incapable of looking after myself forever. Like I can’t be trusted out of my house because I’m too stupid to survive. I don’t think I deserve that, and I don’t think anyone else does, either. I want to know if I’m the only one who’s ever been made to feel this way—that somehow in our society it’s okay to ultimately blame the victim for being stupid, while not blaming the jackholes of the world for being predators. Tell me your thoughts, and let’s talk about this.”
Nearly two hours later with the clock striking midnight, Hannah at last shut down for the night and headed downstairs to her bedroom, exhausted but calmer now that she’d vented into the great void that was the internet. She’d blocked Dalton before she’d even started the stream, just to make sure he couldn’t muck things up any further, and she’d left her phone charging downstairs so she wouldn’t have to look at it. If she’d looked at it, she might have seen a possible message from him, and she wasn’t ready for that. When she stopped feeling weirdly betrayed by a man she barely knew, maybe then she could handle attempting a civil discussion with him.
But not now.
If she spoke to him now, she might just go for his throat.
Her mood wasn’t much better by the time she headed into work the next morning. That was why at first she thought it was just her imagination that everyone was looking at her the moment she stepped off the elevator. Then she walked into the main newsroom at Chicago Pulse and crashed to a halt when several people spotted her and began to applaud.
What the hell.
“Amazing livestream last night.” Keisha Cooke, fellow Gossip section writer, rushed up to her to give her a quick hug before giving her a brilliant smile. “I’ve been trying to call you all morning to give you a high-five on what a big impact it’s had. Did you watch the morning news?”
Morning news? “I was up late last night, so I basically rolled out of bed and drove to work,” Hannah said, offering an uncertain smile and nod at a clapping coworker. “I’m not even sure my shoes are matching. Why do you ask?”
“Apparently a couple local stations picked up on how you broke the internet last night. They want to do a story on you.”
“On me?” Waving awkwardly at a few other coworkers, Hannah hurried to her cubicle to hide, with Keisha close on her heels. “For God’s sake, why?”
Keisha made big eyes at her. “Why do you think? You’re the woman who got all of Chicago talking about what it is to be both a victim and a survivor.”
Holy cats. “So what? I’m not the only person who’s ever talked about that.”
“Yes, but then you zeroed in on how the people in a person’s life can either be a help or a hindrance through that process, and that’s something a lot of folks don’t think to talk about. There are a couple TV news peeps in Godwyn’s office right now wanting to talk to you. Oh, and you should know the co-owner of the paper has already come and gone. I may have been hanging around Godwyn’s office at the time, and I specifically overheard your name being bandied about.”
“I can’t believe this,” Hannah said faintly, her gaze bouncing to their boss’s closed door. “All I did was go online to vent after a shitty ending to an otherwise-awesome date.”
“Yeah, well, your venting sparked a discussion that’s now on everyone’s lips. Seriously, it’s all anyone in the city can talk about. Probably the whole world, actually, considering the kind of reach you have as a streamer. Talk about hitting a homerun without even trying.”
Oh boy. “Um... Keisha, on a scale of one to ten, just how ticked off is the boss?”
“Ticked off? Why would he be ticked off?”
“Think about it. Somehow overnight I became the news, rather than merely being a reporter of it. Now think about who our boss is.”
“Oh. Ohhhhh.” Keisha’s glance followed hers, her smile vanishing under an encroaching wave of worry. “Boss-man doesn’t exactly love it when we become part of the story, does he? Remember when I helped one of the baseball wives in her task during that charity event? Poor woman sprained her ankle and was crawling in order to get to the finish line. Anyone with a soul would have helped her across the line—I mean, come on, it was for charity and the woman was fricking injured. But I thought the boss was going to behead me for becoming part of the story.”